A field near Bardney Abbey
The feast of Saint Hygebald, the Benedictine abbot of Bardney, is commemorated today in the Orthodox Church. A friend of Saint Ceadda and an acquaintance – at first hostile, later a bit more sympathetic – of the martyr-queen Ósþrýð, Saint Hygebald ultimately left the Benedictines and became a hermit, though the abbey he founded continued to flourish after him. Ósþrýð’s husband Saint Æþelræd became abbot of Bardney sometime after Hygebald’s repose.
Saint Bede describes Hygebald [also Hibald or Hybald] as ‘a most holy and continent man who was an abbot in Lindsey’, and the site of his abbacy is generally accepted as Bardney. Little is known of his early life, but he was active there in 664. It was during his abbacy that Ósþrýð Queen sought to have her uncle Saint Óswald’s relics interred at Bardney, but Abbot Hygebald had the doors barred against her. Óswald had been the enemy of Lindsey, and had once conquered the kingdom, treating the residents and even the monks none too kindly.
This standoff between queen and abbot continued. Until one night, when, as the relics stood outside the locked and barred gates, a beam of light, brighter than any star or moon, bright as the sun, appeared: it emanated from the bier bearing Saint Óswald and ascended in a great shaft into the heavens. The monks stood wondering at this, and Abbot Hygebald most of all. It was unquestionably a miracle of God. Saint Hygebald ordered that the gates be unlocked and opened, and that the relics be allowed inside. The bier was borne into the Abbey and placed at the tomb that Ósþrýð had requested for it. He then ordered that the purple and gold banner of the King be draped over that tomb. Saint Hygebald ordered also that the great doors of the Abbey be unhinged and torn down, so that nothing of the sort would occur again. (As a result, when by negligence someone leaves the door open, a common rebuke would be: ‘do you come from Bardney?’) The bones of Saint Óswald were washed at Bardney before they were laid in the tomb, and the water in which the relics were washed, as well as the ground into which the water was poured, showed evidence of wondrous healing powers.
Saint Hygebald was for a long time a close friend in Christ of Ceadda, or Chad, of Lichfield; and their relationship was much like that between Cybi Felyn and Seiriol Gwyn. He was given in a vision to know of his friend’s passing before it happened. He was soon afterwards divinely compelled to retire from his abbacy and seek a solitary anchorage in what is now Hibaldstow. It is there that he spent the rest of his life, and reposed peacefully on the fourteenth of December in the Year of our Lord 690.
Saint Hygebald was canonised by the Western Church and his relics were interred within a shrine, that worked many wonders and became a site of pilgrimage for believers in the Middle Ages. Thankfully, like those of Saint Gwen ‘Teirbron’ and Éadweard the Confessor, Hygebald’s relics were apparently lucky enough to escape the ravages of the English Reformation. Unlike Whitchurch Canonicorum and Westminster Cathedral, his shrine and tomb were both demolished. But in 1864 an excavation on the site of his ruined church at Hibaldstow, which was meant to restore the chancel in the church, revealed a stone coffin, containing the remains of a powerfully-built man bearing a crozier. It is broadly assumed that this man was indeed the abbot of Bardney. Holy abbot Hygebald, true penitent who welcomed the relics of your former enemy, pray unto Christ our God for us sinners!
Thou didst love Christ all thy life, O blessed one,
And longing to work for Him as a hermit
Thou didst struggle by the pools and carrs of Lindsey
With good works, prayer and labour.
With penitent heart and great love for Christ
Thou worked with missionary zeal for the Lord.
Wherefore we cry to thee:
Beseech the Lord that our labours may be blessed!
And that our souls may be saved.
Church of St Hibald, Hibaldstow, Lincoln
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